Returning to the legal background of his debut (The Socratic Method, 1987), Levin focuses his comic eye here on the world of contested wills and acrimonious family disputes as a filthy-rich yet charmingly eccentric band of money-grubbers maneuvers to divide the latest spoils, while their lawyers scheme to siphon away as much of it as they can. Caught in the middle of this contentious mess is the capable and lovely Amelia Vanderbilt, a young trust officer newly assigned to the notorious Gaines family account, who vows not to let them eat her alive as they did her predecessors. When ex-vaudevillian Harry Gaines leaves behind the demand that his relations ``get along,'' or else lose his $60 million estate to the feds, Amelia and her fiancÇ Howard, an accountant at the bank, are placed on the Trust Committee to aid in reaching an agreement. Plans from various family members to use Harry's three Broadway theaters as they were intended, or replace them altogether with high-rise office buildings, create a mad scramble to assemble a majority of votes on the Committee, but rival law firms have more to gain by keeping their clients from finding any common ground. Amelia finds herself fascinated by the Gaineses' history of litigation, which spans more than 70 years, and she is fascinated as well by footloose, handsome Dwight David Gaines, who blows into New York from Antibes long enough to cast a shadow on her engagement. As she digs into the Gaineses' history, however, a skeleton from her own closet emerges, adding a new wrinkle that threatens her position at the bank and leaves her open to blackmail when the most unscrupulous Gaines, a Manhattan real-estate developer who prays regularly to The Donald, gets wind of it. Entertaining and mildly satirical, with layers of intrigue deftly juxtaposed, though the saccharine sweetness leaves an unpleasant aftertaste.
Pub Date: March 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-671-73190-4
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1993
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
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